News: 2015, October 23rd

Six honored with 2015 Master’s Thesis Awards

Six recent Auburn University graduates have been selected as winners of the Graduate School’s 2015 Master’s Thesis Awards.

Award winners are Millie Harrison, Xia Li and Derek Pope in the Social Sciences/Business/Education category; and Jeff Chieppa, Jacqueline Gimmler and Annelise Mowry in the Life Sciences category.

Pope and Mowry have also been nominated to represent Auburn at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools’ Master’s Thesis Awards competition.

The Master’s Thesis Awards recognize the scholarship of master’s students whose theses make an unusually significant contribution to their respective disciplines. Auburn’s colleges and schools nominate students for the awards, and an award committee named by the Graduate School selects the winners for the two categories.

“Impact of decreased wetlands on microclimate of Kolkata, India” by Xia Li (thesis embargoed for non-Auburn University users). Her thesis committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Chandana Mitra (chair), Luke Marzen and Li Dong. Li graduated in August 2015 with a master’s degree in geography and is now looking for a full-time job opportunity while working as a volunteer worker for Auburn’s Department of Geosciences.

“Determining canine skin concentrations of terbinafine to guide the treatment of Malassezia dermatitis” by Jacqueline Gimmler. Her graduate adviser was Dawn Merton Boothe. Gimmler graduated in August 2015 with a master’s degree in biomedical sciences and now works at the Animal Dermatology Referral Clinic in Texas.

Award winners receive an honorarium of $250 and a certificate, which is presented at the Graduate School’s annual awards ceremony each spring.

The categories for the Master’s Thesis Awards rotate each year. The Graduate School is now soliciting nominations for the 2016 categories: Mathematics/Physical Sciences/Engineering and Humanities/Fine Arts.